


a prison of your own making

by CumbersomeWit



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Character Undeath, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Riku POV, and, and the final whopper, as in i wrote the ending, like this is proper sad okay, uuuh there's some fluff in here too so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 07:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4339913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CumbersomeWit/pseuds/CumbersomeWit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay. Let’s do this. Let’s help make the x-blade!</p><p>And let’s do it right this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a prison of your own making

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has fluff in it, but I would not call it a happy fic. Read at your own discretion.

“I can feel it, you know,” Sora whispers into the warm space between them.

“Feel what?” Riku whispers back.

Sora holds up his hand and counts it on his fingers. One, two, three. And he smiles.

“All of them.”

* * *

 

Riku catches glimpses, sometimes, of aspects that don’t quite add up about Sora. It’s never anything big. A slight shift in emotion or a sudden change of topic. But it’s sometimes just different enough from what he knows of Sora to make him wonder if he’s missed something.

“Oh!” Sora exclaims, leaning out the bedroom window. He starts to laugh. Riku stands behind him and follows his gaze.

Bright streaks of light flash across the sky and skitter into departure. “Huh,” Riku breathes, leaning his chin on top of Sora’s head. “Don’t get much of those around here.”

“I wish I had my telescope,” Sora sighs.

Riku raises an eyebrow. “You don’t own a telescope.” Sora tenses against him, suddenly and completely still. “What?”

There’s a moment of silence where Riku stands there, utterly confused and wondering if he should be comforting Sora in some way. “We need to make a wish. Come _on_ , Riku,” Sora urges before he has a chance to react, blindly grabbing Riku’s hand and guiding it to point to the newest meteor.

“Alright, alright,” Riku breathes, mostly relieved, watching Sora screw his eyes shut and purse his lips.

A wish, huh.

Riku wishes that one day he’ll be able to kiss those lips without feeling like he’s tainting something. There’s a void in his heart that grows with each new possibility, each new thought or wonder or stab of ignorance, and he wishes, too, that he can stop it eating away at the good that already exists.

By the time he looks back up at the sky, the meteors are gone.

Riku wraps his arms around Sora’s waist. He waits a moment but Sora doesn’t open his eyes.  He tightens his hold, tangling his fingers in the worn fabric of Sora’s pyjama top. “So what did you wish for?” Riku prompts.

Sora’s lips twitch into a smile, and his eyes move behind his eyelids, seeing something that only he can. “To make new friends.”

Riku spends the rest of the night trying to decipher what that means.

* * *

 

The grandfather clock in Riku’s living room has been stuck on the same time ever since he joined the storm of darkness all those years ago. His dad never tried to fix it, and Riku hasn’t either. Maybe it’s because their journey hasn’t come to an end yet. Sora isn’t in any rush to try for the Mark of Mastery again, or even to continue helping the creation of the _x_ -blade; sometimes, when he thinks Riku and Kairi can’t see him, he stands very still while staring at his hands, bottom lip caught between his teeth and eyes so wide you can see the entire world reflected in them.

In any case, Riku’s kind of glad the clock hasn’t been fixed. It serves as a reminder to him that the darkness is not what allows him to grow.

The clock shouldn’t mean anything to Sora. Except he’s been staring at it for the last few minutes like he stares at his hands, sometimes, at that empty grip he’s too afraid to fill.

Riku glances at Kairi. She gives her head a short shake, and together they look down at Sora’s hands, palms up on his thighs and fingers tensed. Kairi sighs and lays her head on Sora’s shoulder.

“Xion,” Sora whispers, and they both jump.

“Xion?” Riku prompts. Sora doesn’t reply. It’s as if they’re not even there. “Sora?” Riku tries again, taking Sora’s closest hand in his own. “What about Xion?”

Sora startles, dislodging Kairi’s head from his shoulder. She looks up at him as his head turns from her to Riku and back again. He looks back at the clock and shudders, exhaling a messy apology as he curls into his lap. Riku’s chest constricts as Sora doesn’t stop, keeps repeating the same thing over and over.

“I’m sorry, it had to be me, I’m sorry, it’s me, it’s all me, it had to be-”

“You’re not in this alone,” Kairi murmurs, taking Sora’s other hand in her own. “We’re all in this together.”

“Not just us. Everyone,” Riku continues, flashing Kairi a grateful smile. “King Mickey, Donald and Goofy, everyone in Radiant Garden –”

Sora gasps and shakes his head. “Not everyone. It can’t be everyone if there’s me.”

As Sora looks back at the clock with grief instead of fear, Riku’s gut sinks.

* * *

 

“I can feel it, you know,” Sora whispers into the warm space between them, and for a moment he thinks he’s talking about Riku’s heartbeat, still hammering in his chest long after he watched Sora arch beneath him.

“Feel what?” Riku whispers back.

Sora holds up his hand and counts it on his fingers. One, two, three. And he smiles.

“All of them.”

Riku’s heart freezes. “Sora –”

“No, it’s alright,” Sora interjects before Riku can attempt to comfort him. “I get it. It has to be me, yeah? The greater good and all that. And honestly if it wasn’t for Ventus and Roxas and Xion’s memories inside of me I probably wouldn’t be all that great of a good.” Sora frowns, tracing a little heart on Riku’s bicep, and his heart breaks at how fragile Sora believes himself to be. “But I can’t help it sometimes. Wanting things because of them, and wanting things for them. They’re not a part of me, they’re their own people, with their own memories and wishes and friends, and. I don’t know. I just think they’d be better off as their own selves, with their own friends again.”

Riku sighs, bundling Sora up in his arms. He lays a palm flat on Sora’s head, the spikes droopy with sweat and lethargy. “That’s why it has to be you.”

Sora huffs a laugh. “That’s what Roxas said.”

“He is occasionally right.”

“Yeah,” Sora breathes, lapsing into silence. Riku starts to card his fingers through Sora’s hair and his heartbeat finally slows. “Okay,” Sora suddenly says, and Riku hums. “Let’s do this. Let’s help make the _x_ -blade!” Sora grips Riku’s bicep and grins, eyes scrunching all the way closed. “And let’s do it right this time.”

Riku presses an answering grin to Sora’s skin. “Ready when you are.”

* * *

 

No one is ready for what happens besides Sora.

The brightest light and the deepest darkness, two halves of a perfectly morally ambiguous whole. Of course, Riku thinks, as the clash of the last two keyblades rings in his ears, as he shouts Sora’s name and doesn’t get a response.

Of course Sora would sacrifice himself as one half to the whole. He’s never lived his life as a single entity, why would he start now?

Riku shouts for Sora anyway. His entire body is constricted, pulling tight into one point, eyes and knees and heart stretching towards Sora, Sora in the middle of the blinding light, a light Riku and anyone else cannot touch,  a stretch of distance too far and too final and _too much in the way_ –

Sora’s eyes catch his. He smiles.

 _I love you_ , Sora mouths.

And the light engulfs him.

* * *

 

It’s not Sora, Riku reminds his lifting heart, watching the figure emerge from the misty light. It looks like Sora but it walks like a reflection in the water and its _eyes_ –

That figure is as much a part of the _x_ -blade as the _x_ -blade itself.

And it’s all Riku can do, to watch as that figure walks not towards him or anyone else but to the centre of the light of Kingdom Hearts, to hold Kairi’s hand in his own as she sobs beside him, to hope against all odds that Sora’s sacrifice hasn’t been in vain and they’ve done it right this time.

The _x_ -blade is held up to the exposed heart of Kingdom Hearts, and with an expression neither serene nor resigned the figure twists the key until the light from Kingdom Hearts is all there is of the world.

For a moment Riku is drifting weightless in the brightest void. The warmth feels like the ghost of Sora’s skin. The white noise is Sora’s drawn breaths in the deepest sleep. And the blue –

He blinks and he’s back in the dusty graveyard, Kairi’s hand still clutched in his own, body heavy with feelings and exertion, and Kingdom Hearts is protected by the weightless clouds of a bright dawn.

And the Heartless are gone.

Sora – no, the _x_ -blade – stands in the middle of it all, blade lowered to its side, expression neither serene nor resigned. Kairi calls out Sora’s name and Riku’s hand spasms around hers. Everything in him is mixed up; jumbled, muted whispers of personal emotions that fall flat over the encompassing and otherworldly _rightness_ of the clouds in the sky, the one sky that connects all the worlds truly, now, so truly Riku can smell the desert of Agrabah.

This is what they fought for. This is why Sora is lost.

Riku sees Lea suddenly shift into his fighting stance from the corner of his eye. Riku’s eyes snap back to the centre of the graveyard.

The figure is raising the _x_ -blade.

And the tip is pointed at its chest.

“ _No_ ,” Riku chokes, stumbling forwards. He’s let go of Kairi’s hand, he thinks, because he’s summoning his own keyblade and he’s running up to the figure because there’s no more light to stop him anymore and that may not be Sora but it used to be and the memories flash before his eyes, the graveyard at one moment, the twisting curdling doorway to darkness at another, Sora in both, one younger and one not even him at all, both of them with a keyblade in their hand and the tip pointed to their chest and their expressions morphing into quiet smiles.

Riku reaches out his free hand and Sora smiles. Sora. Not the figure. It’s Sora smiling, Sora’s eyes that bore into his own, and it’s Sora plunging the _x_ -blade into his chest.

Riku falls to his knees before the blast hits him.

* * *

 

_“I don’t want to be a weapon,” Sora whispers into the warm space between them._

_Riku draws back. “You’re not,” he assures, voice firm. “You won’t ever be, because you have this,” Riku pokes Sora’s forehead and he wrinkles his nose, “and this,” Riku finishes, poking Sora’s chest just above his heart and leaving his finger there, shivering at the slow heartbeat vibrating through the tiny point of contact._

_Sora grabs Riku’s hand and brings it up to his lips. “And you,” Riku feels Sora smile, wet lips stretching across the skin of his palm._

_Riku tugs his hand away and replaces it with his lips, relishing the way Sora’s heart rate picks up and his hands tangle in his hair._

* * *

 

Riku gasps and pushes himself upright.

He’s further from the centre now, but even from here he can see the two figures standing where Sora had been, two figures that were never supposed to feel the warmth of dawn on their skin again. Roxas and Xion.

And it clicks.

Riku stumbles to his feet and walks over to them. He watches in a daze as Lea reaches the centre, long legs tripping over each other and arms outstretched. He skids to a stop and reaches down, grabbing Roxas around the waist and spinning him around. Their laughter reverberates off the rocks, triples as Xion sticks herself between them and they nearly topple over.

“Axel?” Roxas exclaims as he’s lowered back onto the ground.

Lea shakes his head. “Lea. It’s Lea now, Rox.”

Roxas’ eyes widen. He slaps Lea’s arm. “You fucking idiot, you did it!”

“ _We_ did it, Rox. We’re here now, just like we said.” Axel smiles, grabbing Xion’s hand in one of his and Roxas’ in the other. He starts to cry.

Then Lea sees Riku approaching and his expression shifts, a little, eyes falling to the ground and grin drooping over his teeth.

Roxas looks Riku dead in the eye.

Riku’s voice catches around the heaviness in his chest when he states, “He planned this, didn’t he.”

“It had to be him,” Roxas replies like it explains anything at all.

“ _Why_?”

Roxas smiles, small and sad and proud, and Riku isn’t angry, because he knows, has known all along, probably, what the answer to that question really is.

“He was the only one who had something to gain through the destruction of the _x_ -blade.”

“We’re whole now,” Xion continues, and her resemblance to Sora hits Riku at the same time as his memories of her do, and it takes everything in him to stay upright and still. “When Sora opened Kingdom Hearts and closed it again, he gave us the opportunity to heal out hearts, to make them whole. We owe our lives to him.”

“He thought he was a prison,” Riku whispers.

Roxas’ eyes are wide and his voice firm when he replies, “He wasn’t.”

Riku’s breath hitches.

He wishes Sora were here to hear Roxas say that.

“Ven?” Aqua suddenly exclaims, running up to Xion’s side. “Where’s Ven?”

“He went back to his body,” Xion explains, smiling. “He said he’s looking for you and Terra.”

“Thank god,” Aqua sighs, off again before Riku has the chance to blink. The graveyard is so empty with people lost and people found, swallowing up the sounds of victory and regurgitating them in wavering pulses that pass right through Riku, right through that spot in his heart that Sora has forever occupied, and occupies, now, with his absence.

“And Sora?” Riku whispers. “Where’s Sora now?”

Roxas shakes his head.

* * *

 

_“I can feel it, you know,” Sora whispers into the warm space between them._

_“Feel what?” Riku whispers back._

_Sora presses his hand to Riku’s bare chest, just above his heart. “All of their love. It’s just as strong as my love for you, and Kairi, and mum.” Sora pauses. His fingers curl against Riku’s skin. “Don’t you think their love deserves another chance?”_

_Riku bundles Sora into his arms, presses his cheek to the top of Sora’s head. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”_

_The silence is deafening with what is left unsaid._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really sorry.


End file.
